


A Lifetime With You

by innusiq



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M, Post-Recovery Bucky Barnes, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-World War II Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-31
Updated: 2018-07-31
Packaged: 2019-06-19 03:21:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15501210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/innusiq/pseuds/innusiq
Summary: Steve's inner thoughts, thinking about the past, the present and a future he never thought possible.





	A Lifetime With You

**Author's Note:**

> Something I found on my desktop the other night and thought I'd revisit it and finish it up.

There weren’t many things Steve thought the future would hold for him _back in the day_ when he was a third of his current weight and nearly a foot shorter (give or take). Back when they barely had a dollar between them to spare from paycheck to paycheck, all because Steve needed this medication or that treatment or didn’t know when to keep his big mouth shut, the next day was a gift and the future more an unrealistic aspiration for Steven Grant Rogers. Back when he and Bucky would spend a Saturday night sprawled out on the rooftop of their rundown tenement in Brooklyn because it was all they could afford, staring up at the distant stars and pointing out the constellations they’d learned on their own, seeking out the ones they had yet to find, and naming their own made up ones traced out with their index fingers pointing towards the pinpoints of light twinkling above, making up exaggerated and implausible tales behind each figure, moments like those meant more to Steve than any future he was never going to see. 

He remembers one of those nights Bucky asking, _Ya ever dream about the future?_

Steve’s initial response was to snort, because to him, tomorrow was _the future_ and he always felt lucky enough to simply make it to the next day when each day of his life held the possibility of never seeing the next between his irregular heart, high blood pressure, asthma and stomach ulcers. Each ailment had the ability to incapacitate him on any given day if not end his life unexpectedly all together. He was always grateful waking up each morning to the quiet snores of Bucky by his side and a clear chest giving Steve another chance to make his life count for something beyond taking up space and bleeding their meager savings dry. 

Steve’s eventual response that night was simple in nature, if one only gleamed the surface of its meaning, but underneath the basic words was a plea for more time, more than just another day. They were a plea for a full lifetime ahead of him, with Bucky by his side.

_I jus’ wanna live ta see it, Buck_.

Bucky nodded at that, accepting the truth of Steve’s response in the quiet of the star lit night. When Steve turned the tables and asked Bucky the same question, Bucky’s admittance was stated just as simple and with an equally hopeful gaze up toward the sky above. 

_I do, and yer always ther’ with me ta see it, too_.

Seventy and then some years later, _the future_ is now the present and it’s nothing like his previous life’s self ever dreamed or fathomed possible. In the past he believed he’d be lucky enough to reach his thirties, but now he hasn’t simply surpassed the limit foretold by multiple doctors, but has made it to a ripe old age. He’s alive and well, beyond _healthy_ , a picture perfect specimen of a thirty-something man, even if it’s in a technically century old body. Back when he was a five-foot nothing of a wet noodle, he dreamed (prayed really) for a future where Bucky was still by his side. He was never disillusioned to believe he and Bucky would live that picture-perfect-family-white-picket-fence life. It was the 1940’s after all, and two men sharing a home and a lifetime _together_ back then wasn’t done, regardless of Bucky’s _’til the end of the line_ promise. If the serum and war and loss and their supposed deaths hadn’t occurred, and they had lived out a _normal life_ , it would have been inevitable for Bucky to meet the perfect _girl-next-door_ and settle down to start of family of his own. It would have been inevitable, should he have beaten the odds the doctors limited him to, for Steve to have stood by as Bucky’s best man and to become an unofficial Uncle to Bucky’s brood of kids. They had roles to play and fulfill, acts to show off to the world to survive, even if the façade for others chipped away at their very souls. What they wanted wouldn’t have mattered against what they were allowed to have. 

On one hand, Steve’s thankful the inevitable never had a chance to unfold because watching Bucky settle into a life with another person is something Steve is positive would have killed him if his arm-length list of ailments hadn’t done so first, and yet on the other hand he can’t find it in himself to feel true regret over the alternative history that brought both himself _and_ Bucky to the future he never believed he’d ever see in his lifetime. 

There is guilt though. 

Being forced to waste time touring across the United States like a dressed up monkey performing tricks for the U.S. Army war efforts and not being able to save Bucky in time from being subjected to the experiments of a mad man and his delusional lackey. 

Asking Bucky to continue following him and the rest of the Howling Commandos into the worst fight Steve has ever faced and yet in the end, super soldier body be damned, not being able to save his best friend (best everything) from the fall that changed both their lives. 

Assuming Bucky couldn’t have survived the fall from the train and following-up with his own plummet into the ocean. Saving the lives of millions over one man, he can’t regret that, but the guilt is heavy because if he could do it all over again, knowing what he knows now, he may not have been that selfless or self-sacrificing.

On one side of the scale there are dozens of opportunities he could have saved Bucky from his past, sparing Bucky the years of being tortured and forced to murder in the name of Hydra, but on the other side, without the subpar serum coursing through Bucky’s veins, without the years of on-again-off-again cryo-freeze and Hydra and the Russians and a corrupted Shield, would Bucky even be here today? Was all that Bucky was subjected to the cost for them to have this now?

There will always be guilt.

“Make a wish,” Bucky interrupts Steve’s thoughts from beside him where they are laid out on a blanket in the middle of a clearing, a thirty minute walk from the Avenger’s compound, pointing up to the sky above at the streak of light shooting across. 

This has been a long time coming, even if it feels like just yesterday they were in the same position, sprawled across their rooftop in Brooklyn, Steve skinny as a rail with faulty lungs and heart, and Bucky the walking dreamboat of every girl that crossed their path. They’ve lost each other and found each other time and again. They’ve been separated by too much time, and too many ghosts, and government agencies that never learn to leave well enough alone, and yet here they are, together, just as Bucky had dreamed so many years ago.

“Whadya wish for,” Bucky follows up, turning his head toward Steve, eyes bright in the clear night.

Steve’s quiet a moment, taking in Bucky’s swept up hair and the contentment he can see staring back at him. In the end, his only wish is pretty simple.

“A lifetime with you.”

Bucky snorts, shoves Steve gently, and shakes his head. “Geez, ya sappy Punk. I ain’t goin’ anywhere you aren’t already. Why’d ya waste yer wish like that?”

“I didn’t waste it.” Steve insists with a shrug, looking back up at the stars.

“Whadya mean?”

“It’s all I’ve ever wanted,” Steve answers, eyes never leaving their tracing of the constellations above, and for the first time believing that a wish, a _dream_ , really can come true.

“Sap,” Bucky whispers again, but scoots closer until their pressed together, side by side, head resting on Steve’s shoulder. Bucky exhales a quiet sigh before adding, “It’s all I ever wanted, too.”


End file.
